Public Treasure (uncovering assets through participation and collaboration)
I’d like you to imagine that you are sitting in a park reading a book.
In front of you there are children playing, families are spending time with each other, and older people walk sedately along or pass the time chatting with each other on benches.
There are tennis courts in the distance and some young kids having a kick around.
Some people lounge on the grass or read. Others have somewhere to go and are just passing through.
The park has areas of grass and meandering paths. A variation of trees, plants and bushes create a feeling of natural seclusion, you can hardly hear the nearby traffic, the road is entirely out of view.
All of these people have rich and full lives. They are as real as you.
Most of them live nearby and have shared experiences or a common local history and they all have memories of the park you are sitting in.
The book you are holding is describing the very park that you all find yourselves in.
It reads…
Public Space Cost Efficiencies Briefing
The People’s Park is a 3 acre designated public space situated within an urban setting.
The council currently spends £10,000 to maintain the park and we are tasked with looking at how cost efficiencies can be found within our Public Space Budget.
Usage has been decreasing year on year and reports of anti-social behaviour have been increasing.
Table A overleaf itemises all upkeep costs per annum.
Welcome to the world of local government.
I hope you get my drift…
Real life is complex, complicated and involved. It involves people and experiences. It’s about feelings and emotions. It’s about the place and its history. It’s about our stories.
Decision making processes in local government use systems that reduce the world into a set of metrics. It is framed through an economic lens where we only see what things costs us in monetary terms.
They’re worlds apart from each other.
How did we end up with such a system in the first place?
What is local government?
Let’s take a quick look at where local government came from and where we are today.
Local government grew out of the need to perform duties for local residents. In the days when local government didn’t exist people had to come together to discuss local issues and work out solutions. Need to store more hay — have a barn-raising.
Within a communities numbers they had the assets and the nous to work most things out. They were reliant in many ways on each other. It was all very personal. A wayward young lad could be found work nearby to keep him out of trouble and an annual festival would lead to the next generation getting married off. The circle of life went on.
Everyone had a part to play. Everything had a purpose. It was all rather practical and community oriented. They worked with what they had nearby and available.
As villages grew into towns and lives became more complicated having a conversation between neighbours round the nearest duck pond became unrealistic and unsuitable for the task at hand.
We began to need people to make decisions for us and other people to do the work.
We invented local government because we had to.
From raising funds required to fulfil local need through local institutions such as friendly societies, churches, cooperatives or unions (this is how many of our local assets including schools, hospitals and community buildings were originally funded and built) we moved to paying tax which was handed over to councils to perform duties on our behalf.
Fast forward to today and the complexity has increased dramatically. The number of people living in localities has rocketed and with this rise in population new needs have arisen as has our ability to meet them.
Local government is there to help meet local needs and solve social problems.
Social problems are complex and difficult
In computing there is a class of problem which is defined as NP (nondeterministic polynomial time).
They’re really difficult problems to solve, taking practically forever. The classic example is the travelling salesman problem with the question being — what is the optimum route for a travelling salesman to take in order to visit every household in the UK.
Try working that out with a pen and paper! Just writing Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch will take you half an hour.
There is a correct answer but it’s impossible to work out within any sensible time period and by then another thousand houses have been built.
You’re back to square one.
Many of the social problems we face are actually very similar in complexity. It’s just that we avoid the fact so that we can be efficient in solving them.
Let’s look at one very small example. Let’s go back to that park we started off in.
If we look at the park again (from a more asset based perspective) then we could see that the park sits within a complex network of interlinked relationships within a localised area.
These relationships have value (it’s just not solely monetary) and include aspects of; health and wellbeing, identity and civic pride, activities and leisure, families and social networks, sports and fitness, social wellbeing, crime and disorder, inequality and poverty, history and heritage, nature and environment, learning and education etc.
There are also social considerations that would be represented by the local residents and the organisations nearby. Within these are the stories of why people use the park and why they don’t. What they like about it. What they would like to see there.
With different demographics there are differing viewpoints and needs. Each and every one of them is a local expert with something important to add to the bigger picture.
That right there is a complex problem!
So what we do in local government to manage the complexity is simplify it so that we can deal with it efficiently.
Meetings are held, reports are produced, and consultancies are hired. Local residents are consulted. Politicians have their say.
Somewhere down the line a decision gets made (which in all honesty probably isn’t the best one) and we move onto the next problem.
This is how local government operates each and every day.
On the surface it looks ok but the system is incapable of taking everything into account and engaging with everyone involved so it only does what it has to. People are not offered a level of participation which would be meaningful. What gets prioritised instead is the systems own efficiency and internal agendas, it’s a convergent process.
What we have is a machine for making decisions and acting upon them.
It’s very efficient. It’s massively imperfect.
It’s out of date.
Closing the gap, bringing people and the state together
In the 20th century it was impossible then to engage with multiple people at the same time unless they were in the same room and it was impossible to deal with multiple conflicting wants and needs.
Political parties and politicians had a very important role to play in helping the system work — they could take sides.
Although we understood the social value of public goods (parks and open spaces for example) we hadn’t made the implicit connections between social value and economic value as we have today — they were seen as a cost.
The 21st century is different. We do have that knowledge and we do have the capability of connecting everything together. We can make far better decisions if we choose to.
We have local authorities with the skills and assets to make things happen.
We have national organisations and institutions with expertise in society, social value and need.
We have local organisations with deep knowledge, connections and roots.
We have local people with something to contribute and something to gain.
What we don’t have today is the system, the culture, or the will to do so.
That’s not the only problem.
Getting the formula right
So we know how to do things better and we have all of the answers. We have the technology!
But putting them together won’t solve the problem and to understand why we need to remember that participation and collaboration are relational and time consuming. They require facilitation and resources — there is a cost.
Today we keep costs down for the sake of efficiency and get the wrong results.
But to get the right results through participation and collaboration will cost substantially more.
How do we square this circle?
I believe that we can but we need to adapt our organisations to fit and we need to work out how to exchange value between the participating parties. There should be some reciprocity.
Let’s go back to the park.
Today as a member of the public if I wanted to be involved with decisions about the park I might be lucky enough to get sent a multiple choice questionnaire and maybe I could attend a consultation event held by the local authority.
It’s not just the public who get cut out of influencing decision making. There are civil society organisations that are dedicated to specific domains and issues and specialise in providing and producing knowledge on all areas of social, environmental and economic need; parks and open spaces, health and wellbeing, identity and civic pride etc.
Their ability to have influence on local decisions is also pretty much zero — and they’re the experts with funds and teams of people!
Just think of what we could actually achieve if we all worked together!
Surely it’s not that difficult.
What if the civil society organisations produced educational course materials which enabled us as to become informed active citizens?
This knowledge combined with local public expertise creates a role of real participative value and can help to develop skills and knowledge which can be used in other areas of people’s lives.
It’s good for us, it’s good for the civil society organisation and it meets the local authority’s statutory duties to involve communities and promote democratic participation.
Let’s look at what we all have available and realise that these have value. Let’s understand what our needs are and how we can exchange our value to help each other.
If we bring everyone together we can begin to work something out.
Leaving a lasting impression
The key to get people working together is to create the right incentives and motivations for them to do so. It is in this way of thinking that we can create value and exchange value between every participant.
Doing any of this doesn’t ask anyone to do something outside of what they would already be able to do or that their organisation already works towards.
All it does it look at the entire decision making process from an asset-based perspective and connects the parts.
The end result is not just a better and more informed decision that continues to have beneficial effects for the local population, there are also positive effects for the local authorities, partners, participants and civil society organisations.
It realises this wider impact through participation and collaboration.
I believe that no matter which way you look at it, it’s a win for everyone.
